RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-unmaking-of-american-history-american-historical-association-james-sweet-presentism-activism-1619-project-academics-professors-11661532876?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Academic historians are losing their sense of the past. In his August column for the American Historical Association’s journal, Perspectives on History, James H. Sweet warned that academic history has become so “presentist” that it is losing touch with its subject, the world before yesterday. Mr. Sweet, who is the association’s president and teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, observed that the “allure of political relevance” is drawing students away from pre-1800 history and toward “contemporary social justice issues” such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism.” When historians become activists, he wrote, the past becomes “an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions.”

Mr. Sweet knows his audience, so he did his best to appease the crocodile of political correctness. He denounced Justice Clarence Thomas for a gun-rights decision that “cherry-picks historical data” and criticized Justice Samuel Alito for taking the word “history” in vain 67 times in his Dobbs abortion opinion. But Mr. Sweet also pointed out that Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” isn’t accurate history, and that “bad history,” however good it makes us feel, yields bad politics. “If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.”

History’s armies of nonacademic readers will find this obvious and undeniable. Mr. Sweet’s academic peers, however, tore him to pieces on Twitter, accusing him of sexism, racism, gratuitous maleness and excessive whiteness.

“Gaslight. Gatekeep. Goatee,” said Laura Miller of Brandeis University, detecting patriarchal privilege written on Mr. Sweet’s chin. Benjamin Siegel of Boston University, who thinks his politically correct profession is “leveraged towards racist ideologies,” called the essay “malpractice.” Dan Royles of Florida International University accused Mr. Sweet of “logical incoherence,” which is academic-speak for “idiot.” Kathryn Wilson of Georgia State detected an even more heinous error, “misrepresentation of how contemporary social justice concerns inform theory and methodology.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mar-a-lago-affidavit-is-that-all-there-is-donald-trump-fbi-justice-department-merrick-garland-11661547313?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

A federal judge on Friday released a heavily redacted version of the FBI affidavit used to justify the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and we can’t help but wonder is that it? This is why agents descended on a former President’s residence like they would a mob boss?

It’s possible the redactions in the 38-page document release contain some undisclosed bombshell. But given the contours of what the affidavit and attachments reveal, this really does seem to boil down to a fight over the handling of classified documents. The affidavit’s long introduction and other unredacted paragraphs all point to concern by the FBI and the National Archives with the documents Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago and his lack of cooperation in not returning all that the feds wanted.

A separate filing making the case for the redactions, also released Friday, focused on the need for witness and agent protection from being publicly identified. That filing also contains no suggestion of any greater charges or a larger investigation than the dispute over his handling of the documents.

As always with Mr. Trump, he seems to have been his own worst enemy in this dispute. He and his staff appear to have been sloppy, even cavalier, in storing the documents. Classified records found in boxes were mixed in with “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes,” and presidential correspondence, the affidavit says. This fanned suspicion that important documents were still floating around the house, where bad actors hanging around the Mar-a-Lago resort might pilfer them.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/biden-robs-peter-to-get-pauls-vote/

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on Paul’s vote. That political axiom is the crux of Joe Biden’s decision to forgive vast quantities of student loan debt. He needs Peter’s and Patricia’s votes, and he is bribing them with taxpayer money. Taxpayers know it is not a costless gesture. Their backlash is likely to overwhelm any potential gains.

The problems begin with the program’s cost and inflationary impact. Spending another $300 to $900 billion, the estimated cost, raises consumer demand without increasing supply. Since the program is not funded by tax increases, it will be paid for by printing money. The inflationary consequences are predictable.

Democrats wave away these costs by noting, correctly, that loan forgiveness doesn’t start until next year and won’t happen all at once. Still, the program underscores the most consistent element of the Democrats’ domestic agenda. They are determined to spend, spend, spend. Voters correctly link that spending to inflation and to their own declining standard of living. They see inflation as a tax on everyone, and they know wages have not risen enough to offset that tax. Reminding everyone that inflation is linked to excessive federal spending is not smart politics. But that’s exactly what Biden’s loan forgiveness does.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-8-25-the-governments-most-audacious-lawless-act-yet-and-a-potential-response

Every day it gets harder to keep up with the accelerating lawlessness of the Biden Administration. The basic strategy is, just do whatever the left wants, using all the vast powers and resources of the federal government, and dare anyone to try to stop you. To mention just a few recent examples, one day it’s a multi-trillion-dollar transformation of the energy economy without Congressional authorization (perhaps slowed down by the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA); the next day it’s holding meetings to pressure tech giants like Twitter and Facebook to censor the speech of political opponents; next it’s weaponizing the Justice Department and FBI to investigate and prosecute the leading political adversary on the flimsiest of pretexts. Additional examples could fill tomes.

But now we have what could well be the most audacious lawless act yet. I’m talking about the plan to “cancel” some hundreds of billions of dollars of student loans, announced by President Biden on Wednesday August 24.

With this one, they’re barely pretending to have a legal basis. Supposedly, according to the Department of Education’s legal memo, it’s the 2001 HEROES Act, 20 USC Section 1098bb(a)(1) and (2)(A), passed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, giving the Secretary of Education authority to “waive or modify” provisions of student financial assistance programs at times of “national emergency”; combined with the current Covid-19 “national emergency,” just extended by Biden past the upcoming election. Does this fool anyone? It’s the most naked possible vote buying, in the run-up to the mid-terms. The cynical political calculation is that the Democratic Party base of upscale young college grads will show their gratitude for the $10,000 or $20,000 handouts with their votes, while the blue collar workers who never took out student loans will not perceive how they are getting hosed. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will likely strike this down under the Major Questions Doctrine when the issue finally gets there, but by that time this election (and probably the next one) will be long over. Maybe a Democratic Congress can even pack the Court by then.